Convention center in PB sees revenue fall over 5 months
Revenue at the Pine Bluff Convention Center is down because of the covid-19 pandemic, Convention Center Director Joseph McCorvey told members of the Pine Bluff Civic Auditorium Commission on Tuesday.
McCorvey told commissioners that during the period of March through July, the convention center has seen 25 revenue-generating events canceled, including job fairs, conferences, sporting events, and the annual Pine Bluff Regional Chamber of Commerce Business Expo.
Those cancellations, he said, resulted in a loss of more than $57,000 during that fivemonth period.
During that same period, he said, nonrevenue-generating events such as city government meetings, health screenings and blood drives, had cost the convention center more than $16,000 to host.
“I want to make sure everyone is aware of how this covid pandemic has affected our budget, our revenue,” McCorvey said. “We budgeted for the year $182,000 basically, but in spite of it all we’re still hanging in there.”
McCorvey told the commission that he and Marty Huddleston, the convention center director of operations, had purchased some covid-19-related items for the center in order to open the building to events again, and had received approval of its covid-19 protocols from the Arkansas Department of Health.
“We had to honor the dictates of the Health Department of the state of Arkansas,” he said. “For every event, I have to fill out an application online, and the Health Department has to approve the layout. Every meeting of over 100 people has to be approved before we can actually entertain anything in the building.”
McCorvey submitted a report detailing items that would be needed to retrofit the convention center to adequately help stop the spread of coronavirus infections during meetings and events. The list, which included touch-free soap dispensers and toilet flush valves, as well as touch-free towel dispensers and hand sanitizer stations, came at a cost of $68,000.
“We might be able to reduce this cost with some more research, but right now these things are hot items, and people are trying to get them for older buildings like ours,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily need to be all at one time. We can do it based on the usage of the building.”
Retrofitting of the building’s air filters would come to another $45,000. Huddleston added that all of the air handlers in the building could be retrofitted at that cost.
“We are not even close to meeting the indoor air quality standards that we were grandfathered in on,” he said. “New filters would bring the building up to current code, and I would think it would also help with covid and other communicable diseases.”
McCorvey told commissioners that he is waiting to see if convention centers will be included in the Paycheck Protection Program in the new stimulus bill working its way through Congress.
“If that is approved, then we’ll be eligible to apply for money to cover expenses of keeping our staff employed,” he said. “We did not furlough folks the first six weeks because we thought we would get that money. But this go round, we should be able to do that if Congress doesn’t take it out of the stimulus bill.”
Four staff members were called back to work in recent days, he said, thanks in part to a transfer of $19,000 in reallocated event funds from the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission, which also provides $780,000 in $65,000 monthly disbursements toward the convention center’s annual budget.
“The convention center is too large for two full-time and two part-time people to effectively maintain the buildings per the requirements of the state Health Department,” McCorvey said “This building has not been used in three months, and we’ve got mold growing. We had an event this past weekend, and people were complaining about it but when we don’t have staff to clean, these things happen in a building of this size.”
Earlier this year, before the covid-19 crisis, commissioners approved formation of an exploratory committee, headed by Debe Hollingsworth, to look into the process of selling naming rights to the convention center to raise additional revenue.
Hollingsworth said she had been in contact with the Superlative Group, a Cleveland-based company that negotiates naming rights, corporate sponsorships and other revenue generating proposals between entertainment venues and corporations.
“I guess the question that needs to be answered for me is do we need to move forward on this, and if we do, we need to understand that there are two phases contained in this naming rights proposal,” Hollingsworth said. “Of course, it’s priced according to the two phases.”
Hollingsworth told the commission that the naming rights process would take about a year to complete and would cost $100,000 or more.
Hollingsworth said she would set up a conference call with representatives of the company to give all the commissioners the opportunity to ask questions about the process and the cost.